Gordon Marsden: It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Ms Dorries, and to begin discussing the series of amendments that we have so far tabled to the Bill. As I might have said this morning, having just come off the Committee that considered the Higher Education and Research Bill, I am struck by the fact that the same sorts of issue that we raised in relation to that Bill for students at higher education level are now appropriate to be raised for students at this level—apprenticeships and further and technical education.
Of course the difference, which we might want to contemplate, is that over recent years in higher education not only have issues relating to access and participation been high on the agenda, but, to their credit, both Governments—pre-2010 and subsequently—have taken some steps in that direction. Notably we had the creation under the Labour Government of the Office for Fair Access, but we never had a similar organisation for further education students and apprentices, so it seems appropriate to discuss this amendment today.
I am not necessarily expecting the immediate creation of an FE or technical education equivalent of OFFA, but I am certainly suggesting to the Government that at a time when we are trying to expand the number of apprenticeships and get parity of esteem for technical education, we should perhaps consider what priority that will have in the new Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. Again, the words “Capacity, capacity, capacity” go around in my brain, but I will suspend that for this afternoon and focus simply on the principle and why the principle is very important.
By way of comparison, let me take us back to what the Higher Education and Research Bill said in establishing the Office for Students—an organisation that is not that dissimilar to the institute, although of course it is in terms of size and reach. Clause 2, entitled “General duties”, states:
“In performing its functions, the OfS must have regard to…the need to promote equality of opportunity in connection with access to and participation in higher education provided by English higher education providers”.
That duty to “have regard to” will of course cut across, in some areas, to technical education, because there will be higher skills in that area and there will be providers—FE colleges, for example—that are providing HE. However, when it comes to the broader picture—concentrating as a matter of public policy on what the Government might need to do to promote equality of opportunity and access to and participation in further and technical education—we have a significant way to go.
Shane Chowen, head of policy and public affairs at the Learning and Work Institute, gave evidence to us on Tuesday. He said that people with disabilities and learning difficulties and people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds have been famously underrepresented in apprenticeships for a number of years, so why not use the introduction of this new institute to make a commitment in the Bill to improving access to apprenticeships for traditionally underrepresented groups?
FE colleges and providers have already expressed concern to me about the Government’s focus when it comes to the 2 million apprenticeship target, but mandating the institute to widen access and participation would be beneficial for all parties. On top of that, the Government have set out their own laudable agenda to halve the disability employment gap. Only five in 10 disabled people have a job, compared with eight in 10 non-disabled people. Surely the Government should be using apprenticeships as a critical step towards eradicating that gap.
How, in practical terms, do we go about improving access and participation? They are fine words, but how do we actually put some sharp edges on them? One thing that I and many others would like the new institute to do is look at what might be done for groups who have traditionally been under-represented in pre-apprenticeship support and training. The Minister has already spoken about that issue, particularly with regard to traineeships. Again, I will not rehearse the history of traineeships, except to say that they were—I strongly believe that they still are—a good idea.
If we want not only to meet the targets that the Government have set for quality apprenticeships, but to ensure that those quality apprenticeships are evenly and fairly distributed among all groups, we must recognise that some groups will find it much more difficult to get to the frontline of competing for them without some prior training, support, guidance and so on. From my understanding, that was the original role of traineeships. Now, I will not go into the swerves and views of different Ministers and different comments in the period of time since. For a variety of reasons—some to do with the restrictions that the Government placed on promoting anything other than apprenticeships at that time—traineeships did not really get the head start that, in my view, they deserved.
I welcome the Minister’s comments about traineeships, particularly about seeing them as an introductory route into apprenticeships. In that respect, traineeships would be particularly appropriate for the groups of people we might be thinking of when it comes to promoting equality of opportunity for access and participation. Traineeships are also appropriate for retraining because, after all, the institute has now been broadened out to take in technical education, not just apprenticeships. Traineeships could be used for retraining and non-apprenticeship skill access for the groups we are looking at.
One helpful option that the Government should utilise in the Bill—I am generally quite surprised that they have not, but maybe the commendable speed with which the Maynard review was completed has been a factor—would be to enshrine the Maynard review in law. I think that was mentioned on Second Reading, but I am not sure that I entirely followed where we were up to with the legal procedure. That would send an important signal. Therefore, although I do not want to create otiose legislation, I suggest to the Minister that there might be a mechanism to ensure that that admirable work is enshrined in law. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Swindon for his participation in that process, and indeed to the previous Skills Minister, both of whom worked very hard indeed to ensure that the review got its nod before the referendum—and, my goodness, considering what happened, it is just as well that they did. That would be a good thing to do.
We welcomed the opportunity to submit evidence to the taskforce that the Minister commissioned, and we welcome the Government’s intention to explore access to apprenticeships for those with learning disabilities and other, not always visible, impairments and to find recommendations for resolving that access. Will the Minister update the Committee on where the Government are on implementing the review’s recommendations? It is still early days, but that would be useful.
Schedule 1 is essentially about making sure that access and participation strategies are high up the list of things for the new institute to do, and of course that cannot be divorced from careers advice. I will not stray outwith the amendment, except to say that careers advice, and what has or has not been done for it in the past four or five years, has occupied some lively debates and been a cause of concern both across the sector and across the House. Everyone who has commented on careers advice, particularly careers advice in the school setting, has said that without adequate access to information, advice and guidance that encourages young people to take up apprenticeships, traineeships or, indeed, technical education, we will be hampered in reaching the access and participation strategies that we need.
The Minister has previously commented on the work of the Careers & Enterprise Company, which I have met. The Careers & Enterprise Company has positive goals, although I still have concerns about capacity. If we want to know where people who have become apprentices have found difficulties in access and participation, we need to hear their voice and their commentary.
The excellent 2016 survey by the Industry Apprentice Council, supported by EAL and Semta, produced statistics that strongly underline the importance of careers advice in this area. The Education Secretary has observed that there is no reason to doubt Ofsted’s finding that 80% of careers information, advice and guidance is below the  necessary standard, even though schools have a statutory duty to provide impartial and detailed careers IAG. I am afraid that that was reflected in this year’s survey. The proportion of respondents from members of the Industry Apprentice Council who said that their information about apprenticeships had been poor or very poor remained high—it was 37% in 2014, 40% in 2015 and 35% in 2016. There was some improvement, but there is a considerable way still to go.

Gordon Marsden: My hon. Friend has been in the House for only a relatively short period of time, but she is making some absolutely excellent and spot-on points. In this context, we are concerned with the specific ways in which the measure will affect people’s ability to take up apprenticeships, and that is what I will focus on.
This is about more than information in schools; it is also about who can come into schools to influence people’s career choices. I, for one, have praised a number of companies for what they have done to offer apprenticeships to adults. In terms of young people, British Gas, for example, has for a number of years had a crack team of female ex-apprentices who go into schools and colleges to break down gender stereotypes. Without suggesting that the institute should be prescriptive in that respect, I think that it could and should encourage the breakdown of gender stereotypes in terms of applications for apprenticeships.
It works the other way around, as well. There is a young man in my constituency, a nurse, who has been very active in the campaign for NHS bursaries. We need more men in the nursing professions and the caring professions, and many of those people can come through apprenticeships. Again, there is a role for the institute. Incidentally, another issue is the commitment to continuous professional development, in which the new institute, particularly the technical education side, will play a role. We must be careful there as well to extend continuous professional development outwith the usual groups of people from a professional background.
Those are some of the issues of which we must take cognizance when considering the amendment. Unfortunately, the representative from the National Society of Apprentices was unable to give evidence on Tuesday due to a family illness, but the National Union of Students —it is important to add that the NUS figures are not dissimilar to those from the Industry Apprentice Council—has stated:
“We want the…government to invest in a truly national careers system that delivers impartial careers information, advice and guidance”,
and that in surveys, 21% of apprentices said that they had never received information about apprenticeships.
The NUS draws attention to a point that will not have escaped the Minister’s attention—I know that he was questioned closely on it by the Sub-Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy. The NUS found that the current approach to careers advice is exacerbating skills shortages. Those are some of the arguments that we believe it is important to take on board when considering the amendment.
I had a similar discussion in Committee with the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation. We did not always agree, but we came to some convergence of our views. It is important when establishing a new organisation to give some direction or guidance in the Bill establishing it, in this case in schedule 1. There should be some emphasis on the signals sent to the outside world about what sort of organisation it is going to be. Will it simply be a bog-standard Government quango or non-departmental public body, or will it be a forceful campaigning institution? We had a debate this morning about how campaigning it could be with a relatively modest workforce, but that makes the issue all the more important. Given the references that the Minister made, perfectly reasonably, to the range of people who will not be members of the institute but will be supportive, it is extremely important to send out the message in the Bill that the institute must have regard to that function.
That is extremely important, because governance in this area is relatively underdeveloped, when compared to governance in higher education, which the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation and I discussed during the Higher Education and Research Bill Committee. It may have been reasonable for him to have told me in that Committee that there was no need for me to worry about putting a measure in the Bill regarding the OFS, because the Government had been doing all these other things for years in that area. I did not agree with him, but he had a point. The point about this measure is that although we are not exactly in the stone age when it comes to access and participation, we are certainly nowhere near as far down the line as in higher education.
Amendment 10 continues that theme, but in more specific fashion. It would require the Government to specify in its apprenticeship targets the proportion of new apprenticeship starts for those who were looked-after children, and for people with disabilities. It would ensure that the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education increased the number of apprenticeship starts by care leavers and people with disabilities, so it is linked to the strategy arguments for access and participation that we put in amendment 9.
It is curious how targets are sometimes set; the Government already have targets to increase the proportion of black and minority ethnic apprentices by 20%. It might make sense for them to do the same for people with disabilities and care leavers, though I do not say what the proportion should be. We also seek clarification from the Minister on the progress on the BME targets, if he has those figures to hand. Those targets were set under the previous Government and were never formally incorporated in legislation. It would be helpful if the Minister could confirm that the Government were still working to meet those targets. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), having fought  the good fight, with others, on apprenticeship funding in disadvantaged areas—the Minister listened to his arguments—has also been pressing on these issues due to the nature of his constituency.
The Government’s apprenticeship funding proposals last month recognised that 19 to 24-year-old apprentices who had previously been in care, or who had a local education authority health and care plan, might need extra support. The majority of respondents to the Government survey supported that, with more than twice as many agreeing with the proposal than disagreed: 53% to 26%.
I make a more generic observation that it would be helpful for the Minister to consider: in recent years, in debates on apprenticeships and where they should be focused, a dichotomy has often been proposed between adult apprenticeships for those who are over 24, and apprenticeships for those who are 16 to 18-year-olds, with a greater focus on the latter. I have sometimes felt that we needed to shine more light on 19 to 24-year-olds generally as a target area, because that range often includes people who have had all sorts of problems, sometimes of their own making, and sometimes absolutely not; I am thinking of family circumstances and issues of bereavement, and a number of them have been carers. I know of nearly 1,000 young people in Blackpool who are actively caring for family members.
I have always taken the view that the 19-to-24 range is a crucial cohort from which we should be recruiting apprentices. Even though those young people might have fallen by the wayside before 19 for whatever reason, they often bring with them zeal, experience of hard knocks, and a desire to do even better during the apprenticeship period. That is particularly important. Of course, the Government have recognised the importance of looked-after young people by extending the remit of their care plans up to the age of 25. I pay tribute to the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families for that. It is a good start, but it is important to guarantee that every necessary step is then taken to ensure access and opportunity for care leavers.
Looked-after children achieve less highly at GCSE than their counterparts and often miss out on parts of education. There may be a history of abuse in their background.